Theists, some questions

[GodsRevolt]

God says, "Do not lie," or I introspectively assess a situation and decide on my now that I should not lie. Both are moral.

The fallacy still holds.

Then your morality is external from god, and he's just a messenger. Therefore, "Almighty makes right," as you stated earlier, isn't correct: right makes right, and the almighty might, just possibly, share some of those attributes.

Authority is important when it comes to morals. Someone needs to take the objective stance and maintain consistency.

But how is it an objective standard if you proceed to run these objective edicts through your own morality, and decide whether they're right or wrong yourself? I'm not saying you're wrong for doing that, I'm saying that the very idea of an objective moral authority is undermined by the nature of morality as shown in the Euthyphro Dilemma. Especially since we know god commands some things that are morally wrong.

I'm curious what the independent set of morals you are talking about are. This is no longer "subjective" like you mentioned before.

They're based on the fact that we live in a reality, and can reliably predict our response to certain stimuli. For example, one independent moral would be that harming people is bad; we can say this, because in every sense our pain reaction is a negative one. There are exceptions- the shot you give your kids may hurt them temporarily, but they'll be immunized for the future- but as a general rule, "don't cause pain," holds up pretty well.

The first two parts:

Remember, we are talking about a being that is not a person. I often see the euphemism used of a ruler or a "tyrannical" dictator. But these are limiting because God is not a person. We are talking about a being who "speaks" and things come into existence. Does this mean that God actually says, "Light" and that is what creates it? No. To begin to think that we can understand the very substance of God is to immediately bring Him down a level. We have only a shadow of understanding in the power of God's words in our ability to reason - to follow logic and communicate it. We speak and we prove things to be false or true. This is a shadow of God "speaking" and it actually "becoming true."

With that being said, when I said "Almighty makes right" I mean that in every sense of the phrase. God "breathes" and life is created. Does this mean that God actually inhales and exhales? No. Does this mean that there was no life before he "Breathed" it? No. The idea is that He has made a creature in His "likeness" and given this creature a piece of his essence (you might call it) to animate the creature. And thus there are humans.

Now, we humans desire good. Its just in us. We want it, for others, but especially for ourselves. But we are limited in our understanding. We desire short term happiness over long-term. We desire respite from pain (as you mentioned) though we cannot avoid it to better ourselves (exercise, growing pains, medicine - again, as you mentioned). Sometimes we desire evil with the idea that it is good, or what's best for us (power, greed, lust . . .).

If we could get our desires to be fueled by a pure understanding of what is truly good, would we still choose evil? Would we still avoid the proper pains (as mentioned above) to achieve those desires? No, we would see the choice of evil and baulk at it. We would work towards our pure desire with understanding that it is only this single desire that creates true happiness until we achieved actual contentment. This is the function of morality, to lead to contentment.

God is that contentment. God is the end of the desire that understands what is good and what is not.

Morality leads to God because morality is God's will for us, His "essence" leading us to contentment. God does not love us because we are pious or not pious or follow His will or do not follow His will. God loves us because we are His. He "informs" our desires and we, through our nature, choose either true good or something less than that (usually something less than that).

But you might ask, "Why, then, doesn't God just tell us everything we need to know?" But He does. We know all we need to know. We know that we should share our food with the hungry, abandon needless material goods, be kind to everyone especially those different from us (Catholics should be kind to atheists, right?) We know this! I don't need a smart phone with games on it or a five dollar latte from wherever! I do not need this stuff. And you know it, too. If everyone could get together and stop being selfish little brats about everything, the world could be a completely different place. The place we all get mad at it for NOT being.

And some might say that we just need one person to step out and start living the way we all know we SHOULD be living. But that's just it. God did THAT too. He made Himself human with meager resources, only those you truly need, told everyone "This is how you do it" and then actually did it. And then we killed Him for it.

And you don't need Jesus to come to this conclusion because we already know it. Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." The thing is, Ghandi was not perfect. He didn't get it ALL right, though I think he came close. Jesus did.

Regarding God's free will:
God has the ability to be immoral, but the understanding that immorality is a false option. He has the understanding that evil does not make any sense. H

I can look at what the Church lays out as moral and judge it against what I figured on my own to be moral and see that they come together. In fact, I found the Church to be much more moral than I could figure on my own.